A Space Odyssey The Blue Danube

- The story deals with a series of encounters between humans and mysterious black monoliths that are apparently affecting human evolution, and a space voyage to Jupiter tracing a signal emitted by one such monolith found on the moon.

- Thematically, the film deals with elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life.

- At first, Kubrick and Clarke privately referred to their project as How the Solar System Was Won as an homage to MGM's 1962 Cinerama epic, How the West Was Won.

- Kubrick used Homer's The Odyssey as inspiration for the title. "It occurred to us", he said, "that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation".[16]



Style

See also: Differences between the film and the novel

Clarke and Kubrick wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously, but while Clarke ultimately opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and Star Gate in his book...

...Kubrick chose to make his film more cryptic and enigmatic by keeping dialogue and specific explanations to a minimum.[10] ...

..."2001", Kubrick says, "is basically a visual, nonverbal experience" that avoids the spoken word in order to reach the viewer's subconscious in an essentially poetic and philosophic way. The film is a subjective experience which "hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting".[17]

The film conveys what some viewers have described as a sense of the sublime and numinous. Roger Ebert notes:

North's [rejected] score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for 2001 because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action – to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.[18]

In a book on architecture, Gregory Caicco writes that Space Odyssey illustrates how our quest for space is motivated by two contradictory desires, a "desire for the sublime" characterized by a need to encounter something totally other than ourselves — "something numinous" — and the conflicting desire for a beauty that makes us feel no longer "lost in space", but at home.[19] Similarly, an article in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, titled "Sense of Wonder", describes how 2001 creates a "numinous sense of wonder" by portraying a universe that inspires a sense of awe, which at the same time we feel we can understand.[20] Christopher Palmer has noted that there exists in the film a coexistence of "the sublime and the banal", as the film implies that to get into space, mankind had to suspend the "sense of wonder" that motivated him to explore space to begin with.[21]

2001 Space Odyssey - Blue Danube
Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866. Originally performed 15 February 1867 at a concert of the Wiener Männergesangsverein

The sentimental Viennese connotations of the piece have made it into a sort of unofficial Austrian national anthem. The first few bars are also the interval signal of Österreichischer Rundfunk's overseas programs. On New Year's Eve, the waltz is traditionally broadcast by all public-law television and radio stations exactly at midnight, and on New Year's Day it is a customary encore piece at the annual Vienna New Year's Concert.

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irishjig123 (1 year ago)

If they play music as you walk through the gates of heaven then this must be it..........
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wsdonovan (1 year ago)

@wicek777 hahaha i hate to say this, but "happy new year" is no longer politically correct. we have to take in to account that the entire world does not run on our Gregorian calendar (even though most of the world does). Screw it though. i'm with you, HAPPY NEW YEAR :D

doublecrosspenguin (1 month ago)

Kubrick didn't die, he was reborn as the star child...

TheDudeAbides54 (1 day ago)

And Kubrick made film, and he saw that it was good.

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Production

Writing

Kubrick and Clarke meet

Shortly after completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick became fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life,[26] and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie".[27] Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised to seek out the noted science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"[28] Meeting for the first time at Trader Vic's in New York on April 22, 1964, the two began discussing the project that would take up the next four years of their lives.[29]

Search for source material

Kubrick told Clarke he was searching for the best way to make a movie about Man's relation to the universe, and was, in Clarke's words, "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe,...even, if appropriate, terror".[30] Clarke offered Kubrick six of his short stories, and by May, Kubrick had chosen one of them—"The Sentinel"—as source matter for his film. In search of more material to expand the film's plot, the two spent the rest of 1964 reading books on science and anthropology, screening science fiction movies, and brainstorming ideas.[31] Clarke and Kubrick spent two years transforming "The Sentinel" into a novel, and then into a script for 2001.[32] Clarke notes that his short story "Encounter in the Dawn" inspired the "Dawn Of Man" sequence in 2001.[33]




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